She’s creating a climate where women — who otherwise wouldn’t — will end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe!

And if she keeps that up, men will have to acquire forms signed in triplicate before they’re allowed to chew on women’s shins, and Lighthearted Highjinks and Sexytimez will be forever banished from Skepticland!

@5, Hein, nicely said. Once Penn and DJ get wind of this heretical act of non-Libertarianism, they’re going to have to find a way to ostracize her from the Boys Club. Why couldn’t she just fall in line like Harriet Hall?

I was very pessimistic before, with all the reports of in person trolling and all the visible trolling on Twitter (and Harriet Hall’s fucking T shirt to start things off well). But this sounds like a much better turn of events.

1. Although it seems like everyone in the skeptic/atheism community has weighed in on this, it’s really just a vocal minority (on either side). There are plenty of people in the audience at TAM who either know very little about this debate and/or are still persuadable.

2. Having someone lay out the case for harassment policies in that kind of format (extended presentation, not being interrupted by trolls) can only help. I believe in the strength of “our side’s” arguments, especially when they aren’t being distracted by sniping about FTBullies and other such nonsense. Most of the push-back from the “other side” seems to come from taking the occasional remark out of context, then blowing it up and misrepresenting it: e.g., a simple “guys, don’t do that” in the course of a long video turns into “Rebecca is ordering men to never talk to women again,” and a simple request for a policy that promotes the idea of consent turns into “forms signed in triplicate.” Having said that, I’m sure that in the next few days, people who weren’t there will seize upon one or two remarks in Gay’s speech and the hounds will be upon her, too, but at least there was a large audience who heard the whole thing.

Am I just crazy to think Pamela Gay will be immune to that? She’s religious, for one thing. She’s not linked in any way with “FTB” or “the Oppressed Sisterhood” or any of the Marked Enemies. She’s an astronomer, not a mere scribbler like me. She’s just not good troll material, I would think – and her talk got a standing ovation.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately, and since it’s sort of on-topic in this thread, I’m going to put it here:

I’d be very curious to know what all of the folks who say “there is a harassment policy — it’s called ‘call the cops'” have to say about the Freeh Report. Joe Paterno and the Penn State brass basically relied on the fact that the police had been notified, but no charges laid, to ignore eyewitness reports and continue to look the other way while giving Sandusky access to their facilities and allowing him to lure young boys with his connections to the program. But hey, the cops were called, so that’s all Penn State was obligated to do, right? A decent person’s or organization’s obligations never extend beyond that, right? After all, if we don’t have sufficient evidence to put someone in prison (i.e. guilt beyond a reasonable doubt), then we just shouldn’t do anything. Only an FTBully could think otherwise!

Plus…really? Every single thing said by a Freethought blogger was devoid of reasonableness, civility, and personal responsibility? Is that really true? Does Drescher know it’s true? Does she think it’s reasonable, civil, and personally responsible to make a sweeping accusation like that?

Hm. On the one hand, that response so reveals the bankruptcy of that position that I’m pleased to see someone resort to it, even if it’s based on a moronic mischaracterization. More important, it implies an acknowledgement that what others have been talking about is a real problem; it’s basically admitting that their opposition has been to the people or the presentation and not the basic content of the arguments. This means that the intellectually honest will now have to treat harassment as a real problem, even if they wish to continue to insult and ignore specific individuals they don’t like (who will continue to speak up however we see fit).

On the other hand, the level of intellectual honesty amongst them is low, and there are several who really do oppose the basic ideas of feminism however these are presented. So there will probably be an effort to keep the discussion at the level of alleged personalities and presentation, much the same as in the religious response to the works of Carl Sagan. Many love to point out how civil he was in order to compare him to others, but only some have been willing or able to recognize that he was politely making important arguments and to address those. The others have remained at the level of “Why can’t you gnus be more like him?” due to intellectual failures or a stubborn hostility to the ideas themselves.

I think some trolls will go after her, but I’m not sure about DJ aligned bloggers. I think their line of attack will be, “But Pamala, unlike the FTBBullies…”

I hope so. This dispute needs someone perceived as a good cop, and more power to Pamela Gay for stepping into that role when it wasn’t at all clear she’d be successful. Given that so many of the anti-feminist side have egos that are more strongly invested in this fight than are their brains, there’s a real need for them to save their pride as they acknowledge the reasonableness of, say, having harassment policies.

I hope those of you who have met with such vitriol for playing the “bad cop” will realize that the rest of us can easily see that there’s no way the other side would see sense without your contributions. I just wish those contributions hadn’t come at such a high personal cost.

@pzmyers Some differences between what @starstryder said and what happened at FtB: reasonableness, civility, personal responsibility.

So, the good old sandbox-reasoning of “don’t matter if you’Re right, and I don’t care who is going to hurt because of this, you yelled and therefore you’re wrong”
Yeah, that’s the hallmark of an intelligent adult…